I'm not an IT guy by profession. More something like a mix of an enthousiast, a geek and a power user. I like to think I know at least something about everything but not everything about something. A broad knowledge rather than deep knowledge that is.

For well over a decade I've been toying with GNU/Linux. Most of the distributions I worked with are Debian and Debian-based. The past few years though it has been exclusively Debian. I'm also on Windows XP but all blame for that, I shall forward on to my employer.

Apart from being an open source enthousiast, privacy (or shall I say the lack thereof) is something I read and think about. News papers of the past few months have been very interesting and have only strengthened my beliefs and fed my concerns around this matter.

Until 2 weeks ago I was completely *BSD ignorant. I think I never gave it any attention because I thought: BSD is less open/free than GPL, BSD has a smaller user base so probably less software/hardware support. Basically not interesting enough to learn a new OS. I didn't even consider reading about *BSD.

The thing that made me change my mind was a web page which had "highly secure" and "BSD" in the same scentence! Really?? I thought it might be worthwhile to have a closer look after all.

Since the stress at OpenBSD is much on security, I concluded that it would be my best fit of all the BSD flavours. Good stuff!! There was also a very recent book that had fantastic reviews "Absolute OpenBSD 2nd edition". That made me decide to give it a real try. I added an HD to my current Debian box and configured a dual boot and more less patiently waited for the book to arrive in my mail box.

Just as I did with my move from Windows 2000/XP to GNU/Linux more than a decade ago, I'm currently dual booting. And just as I did back then, sometimes I'm gnashing my teeth and pulling my hear out, at least the ones that are left.

The learning curve though, seems to be much less steep. Partially because I'm already familiar with the UNIX way of dealing with things and partially because the book is truly fantastic and it's well written! That makes I'm actually taking the time to read, reread, and practice .

I'm sure I'll have more gnashing of teeth ahead of me but I'm already starting to feel at home with OpenBSD!

Hello, and welcome to daemonforums! You're quite correct in the assessment of OpenBSD's security stance (though to be honest, *any* BSD is better security-wise in the default config than any mainstream OS like Linux, Windows, or OS X).

Quote:

Originally Posted by virtuvoos

BSD is less open/free than GPL

Experiment:

1) Modify code for a popular BSD-licensed project, and modify code for a popular GPL-licensed project.

2) Don't make the source for your modifications available to anyone.

3) Hire a lawyer, because Stallman will eventually sue you for violating the GPL.

Currently I'm not dual booting anymore, the HD with Debian on it is in the drawer of my desk, just in case I want to recover something I forgot to copy. OpenBSD actually works better on my curent hardware than Debian did

Welcome virtuvoos!! Daemonforums is a second to none BSD site. It is nice to meet you. I've been running FreeBSD since 5.x and OpenBSD since 5.0. I also like Debian and am a long time Slackware user. I really like OpenBSD a lot.

I, too, use OpenBSD for work and it fulfills the requirements for every aspect of my audiophile nature. I do think the audio system in OpenBSD is highly under-appreciated. I do have a little raspberry-pi on which I run FreeBSD, but for all else I am running Puffy. I am quite excited at the prospect of using OpenBSD on my BeagleBone-Black (I can see the armv7 port of OpenBSD becoming very popular in the next while). Also, I will install it on my just-acquired Thinkpad T43 when it arrives next week ... Glad you are a fellow fan of the blowfish.